


Your Life Doesn’t End at Age Sixteen (It Doesn’t Start There, Either)

by Anonymous



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: (Zuko you idiot), Canon continuation of a rather darker tone than canon, Death, F/M, Grief, Less a downer ending than a downer not-ending, Not A:LoK compliant, POV Second Person, accidental murder, offscreen death of offscreen OC children, probably counts as fridging, temporary misplacement of sanity with not-great-for-anybody results
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:47:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25569967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Your coronation is quick, rushed. People have to get home, after all. The entire world is in ruins and they can’t stay for a drawn-out party.(Rebuilding lasts much longer than that final battle.)
Relationships: Aang & Zuko (Avatar), Katara & Zuko (Avatar), Mai/Zuko (Avatar), Toph Beifong & Zuko
Comments: 6
Kudos: 52
Collections: Anonymous





	Your Life Doesn’t End at Age Sixteen (It Doesn’t Start There, Either)

Your coronation is quick, rushed. People have to get home, after all. The entire world is in ruins and they can’t stay for a drawn-out party. Sokka and Suki go back to Kyoshi to rebuild, taking Ty Lee with them. Toph goes back to try to crack heads and keep order in the Earth Kingdom. Aang takes off for the Eastern Air Temple to do something involved with being the Avatar (and the last of his kind).

You don’t mind. Right now you need to focus on internal affairs rather than foreign politics. Troops need to be recalled from around Ba Sing Se, and plans need to be made to integrate them into society as you scale down the national war machine. In the meantime, you set them to protecting and enforcing order in the colonies, which are another problem. The people of the Earth Kingdom want their land back, but some of those settlers have been there for three generations, now. There’s no way that you’re ordering them home (except for perhaps the outer-most settlements), but the reports coming in clearly state that most of them don’t want to go over to the Earth Kingdom, either. They fear that if they do so, then no more firebenders will be born among them. They fear they’ll be persecuted the same way their grandparents persecuted the people of the Earth Kingdoms.

You’ve got your own share of personal concerns, too: finding a place to put Azula where she can receive treatment without killing those trying to help her, and stashing your father so deep beneath the earth that no one will ever find him. Mai is the one who figures out where to put Ozai, in the end, and she gives you the names of guards who can be trusted, as well.

Ambassadors are left behind when the delegations leave, and Katara stays too, trying to heal the lingering damage from Azula’s lightning strike. As time passes, however, her progress lessens and she becomes frustrated. “I can’t clear out all the scar tissue,” she frets. “You’ll need to be careful about getting too worked up.”

You forget her advice within a few days and go see your father, who has been left to rot on bread and water rations. Part of you thinks you’re being cruel, part of you protests that you’re just being practical, and part of you thinks he deserves it for whatever he did to your mother. He tells you nothing, of course, but you expected that from a first visit. When you grimly call back the guards, it’s to prepare to dig in for the long haul.

“What have you being doing?” Katara asks suspiciously the next time she sees you for a healing session. You explain, with Mai hovering in the background, taking it all in with a bored look on her face – but you know her well enough to bet that she’s calculating something or other. So early into your reign, and you’re well aware that she’s doing the dragon’s share of the work behind the scenes, building up a network of informants and finding out just how far your various nobles can be trusted. You’ve already dismissed two former advisors on her word alone. (You tossed five of your generals in prison for war crimes, straight away. You’re probably going to hand them over to the Earth Kingdom at some point, but right now they’re useful – not as bargaining pieces, per se, because their lives aren’t worth that much anymore, but they make excellent gestures of good will.) But then, Mai’s mind has always been even sharper than her blades, which is one of the reasons that she’s almost always bored (she’s not bored now).

When you want to go back to talk to him again the next evening, Mai stops you with a hand on your chest, right over your new scar. “Don’t.”

“Excuse me?” you growl incredulously.

“You’re giving him ammunition if you go back so quickly,” she drawls, as if you should know this. (Maybe you should.)

“He’s the only one who knows where she is,” you protest. “I have to know.”

“Are you willing to have it tortured out of him?” she asks bluntly, and you stare at her, unnerved by her blunt brutality – and a bit in awe of it. She’s always been so much more practical than you, despite her affections of dress and expression.

“No,” you admit, looking away in shame.

Mai tilts her head and catches your eyes again. “I guess he didn’t damage you as much as he could have.” Coming from her, it’s an overwhelming show of concern, and you bend in to kiss her cheek.

She lets you, and then kisses you on the lips, her hand moving lower, splaying across your stomach and being thoroughly distracting. “It’s boring as anything, but patience is what you need, Zuko,” she murmurs after she pulls away. “Besides. News of your coronation is spreading all over the world. Your mother might find out all on her own. Give it time.”

You sigh against her, but acquiesce, leaning in to deepen the kiss.

You don’t realize exactly how badly _Azula_ damaged you until the first assassination attempt, which occurs three weeks after Sozin’s Comet passes. Since the end of the war you haven’t been obliged to do any combat bending, and you’ve been far too busy in meetings and councils to actually sit on your throne and raise the Veil of Flames – if someone wants to see you, they can come visit you in your office where you’re working your way through reams of paperwork – so you’re completely unprepared for what happens when you try to throw off your attacker with a fireball and instead the feel of lightning crackling down your spine drags you into darkness.

Upon waking, Katara is there, trying to heal you, but the look on her face isn’t one that inspires hope. Apparently, when you tried to bend, you had a seizure. Being you, of course, you immediately try to disprove the implications of this pronouncement, and promptly have another seizure. When you wake up a second time you’re shaking and exhausted, and it’s a feeling that never really leaves you again.

“Let me send to the Northern Water Tribe,” Katara says, quiet and guilty. “The spirit water there could heal you.”

One look at the water tribe ambassador’s face the next day, though, and you know that it will cost your nation too much. Arnook is a father mourning his daughter, and is not inclined to be kind to the leader of a nation that he’d rather spend the rest of his life ignoring. Of all the current nations, the Northern Water Tribe is uniquely privileged in being able to simply shun all outsiders. Up at the top of the world, they are entirely self-sufficient. The Fire Nation, the Earth Kingdom, and the Air Temples historically were all intertwined, but the water tribes have always been isolationist.

Mai has been ruling as regent as you convalesce. She takes a great interest in interrogating the assassin (you’re pretty sure she’s the one who caught him, too, pinning him to the wall with knives through his hands and feet), but he’s a lone, frothing fanatic. None of your advisors opposed her openly – they’re well aware that she’s never without an arsenal of sharp, pointy objects – but because although she’s brilliant she’s not a bender nor your wife, her first course of action was to send for Uncle, who arrives several days later.

“Oh, my boy,” he says when he sees you, but you’re pretty sure he’s more worried about your health than your bending – which is completely backward, since you’re certain that not being able to bend is going to be seriously detrimental to your rule (which, in turn, may be _very_ detrimental to your health). You tell him to take the throne. He refuses. You take off the crown and attempt to physically put it in his hand, but he locks his hands behind back and gives you one of those looks you know you can’t argue against. You try to argue anyway. In the brief time it took to summon him back from Ba Sing Se, whispers have sprung up around the palace... talk of rebellion, of a coup.

Those whispers are quieted by the presence of the Dragon of the West, but they aren’t silenced. Your people view you as an outsider who has been in exile for three long years, and who came to the throne with the assistance of foreigners only to turn around and put an end to your nation’s glorious conquests. The fact that you haven’t actually yet _conceded_ anything to the other nations, except the removal of troops from Ba Sing Se, is all that’s keeping you on the throne. If they start viewing you as weak, as liable to cave in to the demands of foreigners or the Avatar... There are still people looking for your father, for a way to free him. If it weren’t for the fact that your mother has not returned and he has not divulged her whereabouts, you’d be seriously considering handing him over to the Earth Kingdom city-states – or even Arnook – for trial.

Katara leaves after another few months, heading to the North Pole to study healing; she seems to take her inability to heal you as a personal failing. Aang comes back to spend some time catching up and to fly her north. He’s a distraction: he’s unpopular in the Fire Nation, and you spend most of the time he’s there ignoring him so you can politick with your remaining generals and your nobles and try to keep them loyal. More than once you wish you could get rid of more of them, but you don’t need Mai to point out how badly that will backfire; especially right now, it’ll look like you’re caving in to the demands of the Avatar.

Aang... doesn’t entirely understand, and every time you look at him he’s got a hurt look in his eyes from being ignored almost all the time. But then, he’s an eternal optimist, who thinks that a peaceful solution can always be reached, given time and patience. The problem is that while someday down the road your rule may be secure, it isn’t _right now_ , and he’s not helping things any by his presence. Maybe he thinks that his power will be enough to save you. It won’t. He can’t force an entire nation of people to listen to him, any more than he could when your father was on the throne.

So you’re a bit relieved to see him gone. Before you let Katara ride away on Appa, though, you pull her over to the side and firmly tell her, “ _Don’t_ steal water from the Spirit Oasis.”

“I wasn’t going to – ” she starts protesting.

You roll your eyes. You don’t have to be Toph to tell that she’s lying. You just know her well enough, and after three years, you know that the people outside the Fire Nation have a shockingly different take on what ‘honour’ means. “Please. I really don’t need the political headache.” As dire as the situation is, the reparations that Arnook would like to see are totally unreasonable, and you’re pretty sure he’d demand _all_ of them in exchange for a skin or two of that precious water.

Katara’s eyes soften as she looks between you, her eyes searching your face. You don’t know what she’s looking for, but you know what she’ll see. You’re thinner and paler than you should be, after being locked up either convalescing or buried in work, constantly skipping meals by accident. After a moment she sighs and nods. “Fine.”

If she said she’d give you her word, then you would asked Mai to dispatch further agents to the North Pole to watch her (or maybe even warn Arnook, though that message would have to be phrased most delicately, indeed) because honour outside the Fire Nation is different. There, your word is much less a sacred bond than a vague statement of your general intentions. (Mai would tell you that no, it’s not the Fire Nation – it’s just you. It doesn’t occur to you to ask her.) But Katara’s expression convinces you that she’ll leave the matter alone... for now, at least.

Your foreign concerns quiet down, after that – mostly because a few days later, word arrives that Toph Bei Fong has found Kuei and is backing his re-taking of the throne of the Earth King. The political upset leaves the entire Earth Kingdom in an uproar, and for a while the city-states are so completely focused on themselves that they forget to keep trying to strong-arm you into rescinding the colonies. The Earth King has always been a mystical figure, as cut off from the rest of the world as Ba Sing Se is, and although the kings of the city-states are sworn to obey him it’s previously been seen just as a formality. With Toph behind him, though, Kuei marches in and spends the next year passing edicts, which he then sets out to enforce in every corner of his kingdom. Apparently he didn’t like much of what he saw during his tour with Bosco.

The Earth Kingdom ambassadors start coming up with increasingly unlikely reasons to avoid seeing you. If they were any less creative, you might have to take offence, but as it is, you don’t mind giving them the breathing space. Until things in Earth Kingdom settle down, they don’t actually _want_ a concrete treaty to be hammered out, because nobody knows what things are going to look like in a few months’ time and they don’t want to act contrary to either their own kings _or_ Kuei.

Arnook attempts to move into the gap by pressing strongly for reparations. Between dealing with internal politics – Kuei’s appearance upsets the colonists all over again, even though he seems to be leaving them alone so far – and trying to regain some of your firebending, you’re distracted enough that his manoeuvring might have caused you serious problems. Fortunately, you’ve somehow managed to win an ally in Hakoda – well, you did rescue him from prison, which you suppose counts for something even after all you did before that – and he bluntly tells Arnook to back off. You find out the full details from Sokka, who drops in a year and a half after the war to give you an invitation to stand in the role of Brother of the Groom at his wedding to Suki.

...Well, of course you go. You take Mai with you, too, and she spends a lot of time trying to look like she’s not actually very happy to see Ty Lee again. Uncle’s left in charge as regent, but he sends along a crate of tea as a personal wedding present.

Your vacation doesn’t impress your advisors, though, and when you come back you start noticing problems with the taxes. Little things, which you can’t make add up, and which whisper of deeper rebellion. They’re wary of Uncle, for now – but he’s getting old (the years have not been kind) and they _aren’t_ wary of you.

Mai moves your father to another area below the palace, and personally takes on the responsibility of bringing him meals. You and she are the only ones who know where he is, now. Azula, sunk so deep into her madness that she can no longer form words, is much less of a threat.

The next assassin arrives shortly thereafter, sneaking into your rooms in the dark. You pull your dao blades from beneath your bed and take his head off. Once you fully wake up, you regret that, because now you have no one to question. Mai berates you over your mistake with unusual fervour; she’s been rather more passionate than normal of late (which means that she has, occasionally, cracked the slightest of expressions) and you’re a bit worried about what that could mean.

You find out a few weeks later. You’re moping over your lack of progress with firebending, which has improved only so much in that you now know exactly how far you can push it before a seizure threatens. Mostly, you can light candles and heat tea – but that’s it, and you know that it’s not enough to keep your throne secure. The vultures are circling, waiting for Uncle to fall. When you push yourself to the brink, you sometimes see little sparks of lightning snapping about your fingers, and sometimes when you manage complete calmness, the sparks come without the threatening seizure – but mostly you refrain from attempting to summon the cold fire. You’re pretty sure it would kill you (Katara, in her letters, agrees).

It’s after one such practice session, when you’re left cold and exhausted, that Mai walks in and proposes to you in a deadpan voice, stating that if you have a wife and heir, you’ll probably win some needed support and popularity. Then she kisses you, and it’s filled with all the passion that her words lack, and you’re not really coherent enough to say yes but the next day you announce it to your advisors, then to the nation, standing hand-in-hand.

For what it’s worth, she’s half-way right. It’s been two years since the war but this, for some reason, is the event that convinces your people that the war is over and that it’s time to move on. Tensions in the mainland ease even as tensions in the colonies rise; they’re sure that they’re going to be abandoned, or worse, forced from their homes. Violence erupts at the edges of your nation. There are riots in a few of the bigger colonial cities. You spend the six months of your engagement period travelling between the capital and the colonies, trying to hammer out an agreement with Kuei, who has by now mostly cowed the lesser kings of the Earth Kingdom (except Bumi, but Bumi went along with Kuei’s reforms from the start). Kuei is a nice, amiable fellow, who has read far too much for his own good and occasionally leaves you dizzy with his arguments. You’re starting to seriously regret that the situation in the Earth Kingdom has stabilized.

At least everyone is polite enough not to bother you with politics on your actual wedding day, even if you don’t get to have a honeymoon because you’re still in talks – but then, with the entire world gathered in your capital to watch you get married, politicking was _always_ going to be a major component of this wedding. Aang performs the service, smiling brilliantly at you both, but you mostly ignore him as you focus entirely on your darkly radiant wife. Uncle moves back to Ba Sing Se a week or two after, claiming that you don’t need him anymore. You make a half-hearted attempt to convince him to be your official ambassador to Kuei, but he just smiles at you and declines.

The talks go about in circles. You think you’re trying to be fair, but there are some things you just can’t compromise on, not if you want to keep the Fire Nation from erupting into civil war. Then Aang shows up a few months later – nearly three years since the war ended – to tell you that he’s sorry, but he’s going to be backing the Earth kings in their request for the Fire Nation colonies need to withdraw, because the border cities are on the brink of war. “If you order the civilians back, they won’t fight their own military,” he says earnestly. “They _will_ fight the people of the Earth kingdom – they _are_ fighting, right now.”

You stare at him and realize that in the past three years, you’ve never felt as angry at even the most duplicitous of your nobles as you feel at him right now. Part of it’s because you’re gritting your teeth at his assumption of your ignorance: you’ve been dealing with this for _three years_ while he’s been establishing a new Air Temple, and he’s _just_ walked back in now. Partly it’s sheer frustration that he doesn’t seem to realize just what this will do to your political situation – because the colonists _will_ fight the military, but the military sure won’t fight _them_. But mostly it’s because the betrayal _hurts_ , not that Aang is siding with the Earth kings, but that he promised them his aid _before_ even talking to you. Red dances across your vision, and you realize too late that you’re tapping too deeply into the source of emotion that you used to power your firebending nearly all your life. The last thing you see is electricity crawling across your skin, and Aang’s wide eyes looking down at you.

When you wake up, Aang is gone, and Mai is there.

“The entire capital is in lockdown,” she reports in her usual bland tone of voice, but her fingers are resting on the pulse-point at your wrist. “Congratulations, Zuko – your heroic refusal to order a withdrawal, even after the Avatar attacked and injured you, has won you the love of your people.”

“What?” you manage to say incredulously, though your voice is still weak and hoarse. It’s been a while since you’ve had an attack; you’ve mostly given up on firebending over the past year.

It turns out that with practice, even you can achieve a certain modicum of political skill. You spend the next eight months carefully maintaining the balance that Mai has won for you with her clever crisis management. You know that the story put out by Mai’s people must absolutely _eat_ at Aang, who hates being seen as the villain, but apparently he feels guilty enough to not protest it. You learn, later, that Mai went off on him with a blistering tirade, demonstrating the full force of her political acumen as she educated him on the Fire Nation side of the colony problem and all the negative consequences that would result if you ordered a withdrawal. Some of them Aang had thought of, but others he’d clearly overlooked, and so he now spends most of his time in the border zone, trying to make agreements between individual settlements. He does make some progress, here and there.

Katara is the one who tells you all this, in her letters. She’s been with him for the past year and a half, but she demurred against getting married when he proposed. She thinks they’re both too young, still, and you’re inclined to agree – Aang is only fifteen, and he should be focusing on becoming a proper Avatar, first. His firebending still sucks, but you’re not really in a position to correct that anymore.

Mai tells you that she’s pregnant. You tell the world. (You might be a bit drunk at the time. Mai is not pleased with the slurred way you announce it.) It works out okay in the end because your popularity soars to new levels in the capital. Over four years into your reign and civil war hasn’t broken out yet, and you faced down the Avatar himself for your people; they’re starting to think you might not be such a weak ruler after all, even if you are useless at bending. Of course, they don’t know exactly how much of your rule you owe to Mai – though she’s pretty loved at this point, too. Her long robes and dour expressions are the height of fashion for young women (and young girls, and even women who are really too old to pull it off).

Katara drops by to congratulate you – Aang is conspicuously absent, off in the colonies or in one of the Air Temples – and check on the baby. She pronounces it fit as a fiddle and leaves again, but tells you that she plans to come back at least a month before it’s due so that she can be the one to deliver it. This is as much a political decision as it is due to friendship. A complication with the pregnancy could be a Very Bad Thing for the current state of the world, and Katara’s well aware of it. Arnook might not be willing to send a waterbender healer as one of his ambassadors to you, but he doesn’t protest the situation, either (though it’s possible Hakoda stepped in again, there).

The next assassination attempt isn’t against you – it’s against Mai. She’s perfectly capable of defending herself, even with her swollen belly limiting her usual acrobatics, but you find something in you snapping when you consider that this man, this piece of scum, is attempting to murder your wife and unborn child. You don’t even remember to feel anger. You don’t feel anything. All your emotions are gone; there is only the perfect certainty that this man is going to die.

When you draw your dao, lightning crackles down the blades and just like that, it’s yours.

The bolt takes him straight through the chest. You’re not sure who is more surprised, him or you – but it’s probably you, because he doesn’t live long enough to feel much at all.

“I thought I told you after the last one that we need them alive,” Mai says dryly, and you kiss her on the cheek, then order her guard tripled. (It turns out that this means ordering her a guard, _period_ , because Mai got rid of them years ago without telling you. She likes her freedom of movement. You two have a loud argument about this later.) Then you go practice lightningbending, sending cracks of thunder through the palace and terrifying your nobles.

Perhaps it terrifies them too much. Mai’s words come back to haunt you one evening, about a week before Katara’s due to return, when Mai mentions that she’s not feeling well at dinner. Fifteen minutes later there are two midwives and a surgeon cutting into her still-warm body, trying desperately to save the child. Your presence probably makes them nervous, but you do nothing but stand and watch. (The amount of blood should be shocking. Shouldn’t it? Why doesn’t it feel shocking?)

It’s a girl.

Past the birth-blood, she’s blue all over. One of the midwives flash-boils a bowl of water and drops herbs into it, lifting the child over into the acrid steam that results. The baby still isn’t moving. The midwife swears. The other tosses her a jar with some sort of paste in it and she opens the tiny mouth, dabs some onto the too-small tongue.

A feeble twitch of the limbs. A cry. Your daughter is alive, for now.

You are beginning to consider that perhaps Azula damaged something deeper than you had suspected, because you can’t feel a thing.

“Fire Lord,” says a woman standing nearby, in the same room. You look at her with indifference, and she bows. She is vaguely familiar – one of Mai’s agents. You’ve seen her coming and going, but you made a point to let Mai handle that side of things. Mai, who never took her own safety seriously enough. Though it’s not like you did, either. None of your practice with lightning had the chance to save her from this assassin.

“Have you found him.” You don’t put any inflection into your words. You can’t find any to put there.

“My Lord, he took poison.”

A dead end – or not. You consider: he was a fanatic, he used poison, he struck at _Mai_ – your wife and the woman carrying your heir. Not someone from outside, then. This was someone in the Fire Nation, someone who knew exactly how capable Mai – was. The poison: someone old-school. There are a handful of powerful families in the Fire Nation that all fit the bill.

You turn to the midwives, who are no longer cursing. “How is she?” you ask.

The answer is reluctant, and not merely because they wish to spare you bad news. Do they find you frightening? So few people ever have. “She breathes for now, my Lord, but her condition is fragile.”

You nod, and turn to your wife’s agent – your agent, now – and inform her, “You have preparations to make.”

Three days later, the pyre burned down to ashes, you set sail with a hastily-assembled fleet for the northern islands, where the Te family rules. They have the dubious honour of being first because their house’s stronghold lies the closest to the capital, but you plan on paying a visit to at least three others before you return home. You don’t know if your daughter will be dead or alive when you come back.

“Fire Lord,” the adults murmur as they prostrate themselves before you. You’d put a stop to that custom two weeks into your reign, but don’t correct them now. The children prostrate themselves as well: the entire household has assembled in the grand entrance hall of their manor here in the district capital. They offered no resistance on the way in.

Lord and Lady Te have three children. Lady Te’s younger brother (it is her family which holds claim to this island) has two more. Two are older than ten. One will need a nursemaid.

If your own daughter does not live, perhaps one of them will be your heir.

“They will be well looked-after in the capital,” you tell their parents. They don’t seem to find it reassuring. Your voice is too flat, maybe. You don’t repeat yourself. “I expect by the time they return, they will already view it as home.” That doesn’t reassure them at all – but you didn’t intend that it would.

Later, as three of your ships peel off from your force, heading back home with their nervous cargo, your agent joins you on the balcony. “You risk civil war, Fire Lord,” she says flatly, and you wonder if Mai gave her instructions on how best to handle you.

“I know.”

 _You never think these things through!_ Uncle told you once, frustrated with your rash impetuosity. You’re content to let your agent think the same, for now. It is an easy conclusion to draw: this is a small force (you couldn’t assemble anything large in so small a window), and it will weaken as it goes further northward (where the more dangerous families live: the Fengs and the Kozans, and you and your agent are sure one or both must be behind the assassin). No noble family is permitted its own navy, of course, but the northern islands – the strongholds of those mighty families – are high, rocky things, jutting out of the water like natural fortresses. If they hole up there, you will need to summon the air force to deal with them, and that will cause... difficulties, with the Earth kingdom. And kidnapping children – no, this will make you no friends.

A rash move.

But being unable to feel anything has given you more than enough time to _think_ , and when you are sent a message one morning that the Feng stronghold has come into view and it does not look as though they intend to let you sail in, you stand on deck and you still feel nothing. The isle itself is naturally quite defensible, with high cliffs on all sides, even around the inset harbour – and they’ve put trebuchets up on all of them. You’re going to take heavy casualties if you try to land there. The Feng manor – really more of a palace – is situated on the southeastern side, turning into a fortress where it meets the cliff, a cliff so steep it actually bends out across the water. Not even the lizards can climb up it.

Taking one child – the eldest – as a hostage is tradition, even if it’s one not commonly carried out anymore. Taking all of them is not something your enemies will be able to stand. With such a tiny fleet, they will never get a better chance to declare civil war.

They don’t know what power the emptiness brings.

“Send a messenger,” you order, because you must be sure. You’ve been wrong so often in the past. But the shot of flaming pitch launched at your fleet’s cutter proves that in this, you are correct. You order your force to blockade the harbour and your flagship to circle around to those same cliffs.

“Fire Lord, your skills at stealth are impressive, but even if you could climb those cliffs, you are but one man and we cannot lose you,” your agent says, urgency in her voice.

“I’m not going cliff-climbing,” you tell her. Even your own voice sounds far away, now. It is all... distant. Remote. You are so far opposite your own self that you don’t even have to think to split the opposing forces of lightning; the memory of your Uncle’s demonstration of it lingers in your mind, and you raise your hand and send the cliff side tumbling into the sea, taking the Feng manor with it.

Then you order your flagship to sail back around to the harbour, where the rest of the fleet waits, and you shoot lightning at the tops of those cliffs, too, blowing away the trebuchets and allowing your fleet to sail in without much challenge at all. The fighting on the shore is brief and brutal. Your soldiers – and you picked the best – swiftly prevail. You watch the entire thing through a scope, not trusting yourself to go there and join the fight. You’re not sure you’d be able to keep from hitting your own troops.

After the day is won, the Fengs and their loyal retainers are rounded up. There aren’t many of them – most, including the children, were in the manor when you dropped it into the sea. There are no hostages for you to take here. Those remaining are all adults, all shooting daggers at you with your eyes, and probably wouldn’t be willing to forgive you in any case, hostages or no. You give your agent a day and listen to her report, but although it is what you expected it brings you no satisfaction. Your voice is bored as you order the prisoners’ hands and feet bound with weights, and command that they be dropped overboard to drown. (Bored. Just how she always tried to sound, when making her most momentous declarations.)

When you visit the Kozans, they prostrate themselves just as the Te family did, and they do not protest as their children are led away.

For four days after you get home, no one bothers you. At all. Someone else arranges a period of national mourning for the late Fire Lady. You don’t know who. You don’t participate. You spend the time plotting out exactly how to kill the Avatar when he shows up, before he can kill you; you haven’t sent out word to anyone, but the Fire Nation’s a lot more open than it used to be. He’ll find out what you’ve done. He’ll come to pass judgement.

When Aang does come, you’re crying into a bottle of firewine, and you tell him everything – including all the ways you thought up to have him killed. He looks uneasily at the metal-plated floor and floats up to stand on a chair instead. You drunkenly throw yourself at his feet – a parody of how people used to prostrate themselves before your father’s throne – and beg his forgiveness. At that point the alcohol starts making everything really unclear, and you’re not quite sure what happens next.

Surprisingly, when you wake up, you don’t have a hangover. The reason why becomes clear a moment later when Katara walks in, face solemn. Aang has left. Though Mai is no longer about to educate him on the political nuances of the fire nation, apparently _Toph_ , of all people, took it upon herself to do so in Mai’s place. She informed the Avatar that he was still _persona non grata_ in the Fire Nation and that right now, in the wake of Lady Mai’s death, was not the time to try and change this. Toph’s able to do all of this because apparently she arrived right on the heels of Katara and Aang. Ba Sing Se’s a lot further from your capital than the colonies, but Toph has much better and faster informants than Aang.

“Your daughter’s alive,” Katara tells you, and her voice is cold. “And she’s going to stay that way.”

“We never decided upon a name.” You didn’t mean to say that.

“And all those other kids?” she demands. “Zuko, what are you _doing_?”

You haven’t a clue. “I’m trying to give them a chance not to turn into vipers like their parents.”

“I’m talking about the ones _you killed_!”

You hadn’t realized until too late that the kids would be in the manor house-turned-fortress. Of course they would be. It should have been the safest place on the island. Where else would any parent put their child?

You never think these things through.

“Don’t turn into your father, Zuko.” For all that she is surrounded by the dense humidity of the Fire Nation, she is as cold as the Antarctic air.

You father. Hmm. You forgot about him. The thought – should make you feel something. Right?

Katara speaks for what feels like ages, but then, everything feels like it moves at the speed of a glacier, these days. Time stopped when Mai collapsed, when the floor around her became soaked in blood. It hasn’t really started again, not for you. You bear Katara’s warnings, threats, and offered comfort – it must be awkward in the extreme for her, trying to comfort a grieving friend who also went completely off the deep end and turned into a monster.

When she leaves, Toph arrives, and you look at her in silence for a few minutes before realizing that she is your parole officer, of sorts. Well, fair enough. You stand without explanation and take the secret paths that will lead you to Ozai.

There’s nothing to be done about Ozai, of course. He died at least a few days ago and you stare dully at his remains and think about how fitting it is for him to die from thirst. Then you cast lightning into the roof of his cell and bury the entire thing. (And nearly yourself in it, but Toph saves you from that bit of not-thinking-things-through.)

“So, was that intentional?” she asks, and you don’t know what she means.

“Mai was the one who brought him food and water.” The name slips past your lips too easily. “I forgot.”

“Jeepers, Sparky,” she mutters, and that’s the last time you speak to her for a while. She speaks to _you –_ but the ice in your soul (since it happened you can’t even light candles, anymore) that prevents you from caring about the fact that _you_ _dropped the kids off the cliff_ also prevents you from caring about what your friends may think of you, except when you’re drunk – and Toph’s second action is to confiscate your firewine.

Her third action is to tell you to go see your daughter. (She still doesn’t have a name.) When you ignore her, picking up some of the reports you’ve been neglecting, Toph buries you up to your neck and _tells_ you to go see her. You sigh, and continue to ignore her. The reports aren’t really important. Somebody else has been handling these things for days. You country won’t fall apart in the time that it takes Toph to let you out, you’re pretty sure.

If it does, would it be so terrible?

Of course, this is Toph Bei Fong, who can _take_ you to your daughter, whatever you or your feet might try to say about the matter. When she threatens this, you ask her, “Do you think she’d thank you for _forcing_ her father to see her?”

“I think she’s a _baby_ who won’t know any better,” Toph says with a wrinkled nose, and off the floor carries you.

Your daughter is small, even for a baby – she was born five weeks early. Her grip is weak, even for a baby – the poison apparently wasn’t something that could cross from Mai’s body to hers, but the grotesqueness of her birth left complications. Whether there will be long-term effects remains to be seen. She’s not got much hair. She wakes up crying when you hold her.

Everyone is watching you. You hand her back to the midwife, and leave.

  
  


  
  


  
  


Uncle arrives, and you manage to gather that he’s _very_ unimpressed with the way Toph took off from Ba Sing Se without first informing him what had happened. She, in turn, looks supremely uncomfortable with this, and backs off; he’s one of the few older adults whose disappointment could actually make her change her mind. Then for a while Uncle is your parole officer, and you spend the time not spent reviewing reports playing pai sho and drinking tea in silence.

Sometimes, you spend it out on your balcony, conversing with shadows.

Eventually, the second-in-command of Mai’s network comes and reports to you in person. You’ve never met her before. She introduces herself as Palu and tells you about their current efforts, gives you a much-more-detailed briefing on public opinion than your own official advisors have ever given you – though, granted, that was because you always trusted Mai to do the job much better – and then asks what you want them to be doing.

“I want you to find out about assassins _before_ they strike,” you snap, and there’s not much anger in it but it’s the first thing you’ve felt in ages, and it feels strange, rubbing raw against the ice.

“We do our best,” Palu replies levelly, though you can see her shrinking back just a bit. Then she tells you about the eighteen attempts that they’ve managed to shut down before anyone even got near you or Mai, and you grit your teeth in frustration. This is the sort of thing you should have been told about. The sort of thing _Mai_ should have told you about.

More than half your kingdom you’d left into Mai’s care, and now she’s gone, taking some irrecoverable part of you with her, and the bit of you that remains has to be able to rule _all_ of it. You’re sure you’re not up to the task, and equally sure you’re going to die trying anyway, because Mai’s memory deserves no less.

“Keep on as you were, then,” you order, resisting the urge to drum your fingers on the desk just to see lightning spark from them. “Every afternoon, after lunch, you will report to me personally – unless you are tied up in related business,” you amend. “You will be giving me a full briefing on what” – you stumble over Mai’s name, choose a different word entirely – “you have been doing all these past years, and you will keep me up to date on _all_ your current activities. Understood?”

Palu nods and slips away. You sigh. You’ve no reason to trust her, this woman you’ve never seen before, except that _Mai_ apparently trusted her – and Palu knows too many details, too many things that _do_ match up, to be anything but what she’s claiming to be. You think.

Because you’re rather paranoid, though, you have Toph sit in on their first session, especially when Palu introduces herself. Afterwards, Toph tells you that she was glossing over the truth at a few points, but was basically honest. When she tells you _which_ points, you realize that Palu had good reason to skim over them, seeing as how you’re not sure how many strings Toph is still pulling back in the Earth Kingdom. You don’t ask Toph to come again. When she sometimes plonks herself down in your room and won’t be gotten rid of, you simply shrug and leave the doors open, and Palu stays away.

Uncle goes back to Ba Sing Se when you go back to holding meetings with your regular advisors, instead of simply requesting reports from them all the time. You’re tempted to have Toph sit in on _them_ , too, but you’re pretty sure that you can get a general sense of what _they’re_ lying about (which is quite a lot, since some of these men were your father’s advisors). Then you give in to paranoia and have her come anyway, and after she tells you that your Minister of Agriculture gets nervous when you enter the room, and frightened every time you look at him.

At the next meeting you ask him to stay behind, and casually ask, “Is there something more I should know about, Minister Cheng?” Behind his back, Toph gives a thumb up, high above her head – Cheng is _definitely_ nervous.

“Fire Lord, I cannot possibly think of anything,” he fumbles.

 _Lie,_ Toph mouths.

“Something petty or serious?” you wonder aloud. “Are you afraid I’d dismiss you from your post for it? Or do you think I’d throw you in jail? Or... something worse?” Toph is shakes her head through the first option, nods at the second, and nods emphatically at the third. “I’m not my father, Cheng. I don’t throw people in jail for merely causing me offense or even going behind my back – I kind of expect you to. So if it’s just that, you can breathe easy.” Toph shakes her head. “But what you’ve done is worse.” Another emphatic nod. “You know, there’s really only one thing that would cause me to do something to someone worse than just sending them to jail.” A nod. “And that’s if you were involved in the murder of my wife.”

“I – I don’t know what you mean – ”

 _Lie_.

“Agni Kai at sunset, Cheng,” you say, letting enough of your rage through to flare the candles in the room. He collapses to his knees. You leave him there.

One of Palu’s people is waiting for you at the door. You don’t recognize him, but they have a general _look_ about them, when they care to show it. “How did you miss him?” you ask coldly.

He shakes his head, wide-eyed. “I don’t know.” But you’re not looking at him – you’re looking at Toph.

And she says - “Truth, Sparky.”

You gesture for guards – firebenders, specifically – to be posted inside the doors, waiting for Toph’s indication of whether or not they are loyal before you leave them to it. Palu’s man stays behind, and you find you don’t really care about what state Cheng is in when he arrives at the Agni Kai.

You go about the rest of the day more or less as usual, ignoring the nervous vibes that everyone is giving off. At sundown, you go out to the arena. The stands are packed. Memory tries to reach up and choke you, but you’re not the underdog in this fight. _You’re_ the Fire Lord, now.

Cheng’s wife approaches you as you enter and throws herself down upon her knees before you. “Please, Fire Lord,” she babbles, “Whatever my husband has done, please – he is foolish, but he is a good man, he truly is – ”

“Go sit down, Lady Cheng,” you tell her coolly. There’s no need to have her arrested. You know without being told that Palu’s people are watching her, along with every other contact of Cheng’s.

When you step onto the dais, Cheng is already there – prostrate in front of you.

“Get up,” you tell him quietly.

“I will not fight you, my Lord,” he replies, words somewhat muffled from having his face pressed into the stone.

Rage fills you at his sheer _gall_ in attempting this defence. Black spots and lightning dance across your vision and you have to clamp down on it hastily, lest Cheng win by default.

“Do you think that I will spare you?” you demand. Your voice is loud enough for the entire stadium to hear. Having been kept ignorant of the charges, they listen eagerly now. “I’ve left the punishment of murderers to the courts, but you’ve conspired to commit treason! Do you think I’ll just let you go if you debase yourself and _crawl_ for it!”

“I throw myself upon your mercy, Fire Lord,” he whimpers.

“Get up, Cheng, unless you want to die on your knees.”

“Please...”

You roll your eyes in disgust, mostly at him, but partly at yourself. Then you turn and walk away, gritting your teeth. You’ll send him to the courts. The crowd breaks out in murmurs.

Behind you, he begins babbling, “Thankyouthankyouthankyou,” and you think of how Mai would find him utterly pathetic. How Agni-damned _unfair_ it is that a worm such as him could help lay low a dragon such as her. Sparks dance across your fingertips. Cheng doesn’t notice, continuing his babbling. His face is pressed into the ground and he doesn’t see your arm rise.

You blow him off the dais with one bolt.

The stadium is dead silent as you walk out.

Three paces indoors, you ask without turning, “I thought you were supposed to be preventing me from doing that.”

“Meh,” Toph replies, shrugging as she jogs to catch up with your long strides – at age sixteen she’s still deceptively petite. “He had it coming. If you go after his kids, _then_ I’ll stop you, but you won’t do that.”

Cheng has three children, age fourteen, ten, and seven. At fourteen you had already killed in battle (and you’re pretty sure Azula had killed outside of battle). But that was before the war ended.

  
  


  
  


Your subjects call you the Lightning King, now, and you’re less loved than you were before Mai’s death. But you’re more respected, and feared, and as you look out over your advisors – who now tell more truths than lies; they’re never certain when the little earthbender will be hiding in an alcove, ready to reveal their duplicity – you think that you can live with the trade off.

And if not, you’ll die trying anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> Dug this up from a drawer recently, dusted it off, and thought eh, why not. Posted anon because this is _old_ , and I continue to have mixed feelings about it.


End file.
